"Disastrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is generally directed. But the unit of society in a republic is the individual, and not the race, the failure to recognize this fact being the fundamental error which has beclouded the whole discussion. The effect of disfranchisement upon the individual is scarcely less disastrous. I do not speak of the moral effect of injustice upon those who suffer from it; I refer rather to the practical consequences which may be appreciated by any mind. No country is free in which the way upward is not open for every ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... speak a few parables to Mr. Crocker the other day. You know, Marian, that he is one of these level-headed old fogies who think women ought to be kept in a menagerie, behind bars, to be inspected on Saturday afternoons. Now, I appeal to you if it wouldn't be disastrous to fall in love with a man of such ideas. And just to let you know what a literal old law-brief he is, when I said he had had a hat-pin sticking in him for several weeks, he nearly jumped overboard, and began to feel himself ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stumbled was levelled by the fury of the blast. This column had been raised a few years before to the memory of the officers and men of the 1st Troop, 1st Brigade, Bengal Horse Artillery, who were killed in the disastrous retreat from Kabul in 1841. It ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... with Fuller, Morey again went down to disastrous defeat in an amazingly short time. It almost seemed as if Fuller could anticipate ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... because there was no time for other method of progression, but because he must be fit, fit, fit. No more 'Old Mooney' for him; he kept an eye for ever on that gentleman, and became doggedly the most practical of men. And practical in the cheeriest of ways. In 1894 a disastrous change came over the fortunes of the family, the father's money being lost and then Scott was practical indeed. A letter he wrote I at this time to his mother, tenderly taking everything and everybody ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his interests, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... grace which is now recognised as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer, there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gave it a sharp pull. Although it yielded slightly, it did not break, and, encouraged by this, he threw his whole weight on it as a conclusive test of its strength. The result was sudden, surprising, and wellnigh disastrous. The cord gave way so readily that Peveril sprawled at full length on the rocks, while, at the same time, something heavy fell with a rush down the face of the cliff and struck with great ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... explains the belief of the Old School in the imputation of Adam's sin thus: It was not the personal guilt of Adam which was imputed to his descendants, but "certain disastrous consequences." They, as well as he, became "subject to temporal and eternal death." The next consequence of Adam's sin we must give in Professor Lawrence's own language, in order not to misrepresent him. "The first evil disposition which led ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... needle, as may be noted, invariably quivering back to the same point—namely, righteous anger against Damaris. For was not that high-spirited maiden's imperviousness to influence and defiance of authority—her, Theresa's, influence and authority—the mainspring of all this disastrous complication? Theresa found it convenient to believe so, and whip herself up to almost frantic determination in that belief. It was so perfectly clear. All the more clear because her informant, Mary, evidently did not share her belief. Mary's account ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... necessarily, but restricted opportunity for design, and any attempt at great novelty is apt to be disastrous; if originality appears, it will be in the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... that none succeeded in reaching it. In order to inspire them to desperate deeds he had led them in person, and with him that meant victory or death. According to the army accounts, it was a thrilling moment, and might well have proved disastrous to the Forsythe command, whose leader was wounded and helpless. The danger was acute until Roman Nose fell, and even then his lieutenants were bent upon crossing at any cost, but some of the older chiefs prevailed upon them ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... altered all this. M. Bonfils arrived suddenly one day, bringing most disastrous news of Dahomey. The king was dethroned, taken prisoner by the Ashantees, who meant to found a new dynasty. The royal troops and the regiment of Amazons had all been conquered and dispersed. Kerika alone ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to me the most utterly incredible about all this terrible story," said Edith, "is that a system which was such a disastrous failure in its effects on the general welfare, which, by disinheriting the great mass of the people, had made them its bitter foes, and which finally even people like Julian, who were its beneficiaries, did not attempt to defend ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... attractive. Poor Enid was often in trouble; her lively tongue could not resist talking in class or whispering during preparation hours. She was ready enough to respect Miss Harper, but she was apt to defy Miss Rowe's authority, a form of insubordination which generally ended in disastrous consequences. Patty, in common with most of the class, found it rather difficult to get on with Miss Rowe. It felt hard to be corrected sharply for some slight slip, and to be expected to obey every trivial ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the Northumbrian towns went again through a furnace of thirst and fever and furious fighting, to gain the same water-courses and invest the same cities as of old. They trod the hills of Galilee and the Horns of Hattin threw no shadow on their souls; they crossed dark and disastrous fields whose fame had been hidden from them, and avenged the fathers they had forgotten. And the most cynical of modern diplomatists, making their settlement by the most sceptical of modern philosophies, can find no practical or even temporary solution for this sacred land, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... Duesseldorf, December 13, 1797, of Jewish parents. The Napoleonic Wars were among the chief impressions of his childhood. He saw Napoleon ride through Duesseldorf; he saw the tattered remains of the Grande Armee return from the disastrous Russian campaign; and although not without the patriotic fervor of the German youth, he could not but admire the genius of the great Corsican (46). At Hamburg the young Heine was to enter upon a commercial career under the guidance of his rich uncle, but failed. An unrequited love for his cousin ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... whose early life had been passed in the East-Indian Portuguese wars, imprudently and cruelly disturbed the peace of the rising settlement, by the murder of a son of one of the chiefs. The consequence was, that after a most disastrous warfare, in the course of which the already flourishing sugar-works were burnt, he and Caramuru were both obliged to abandon the settlement and retire to Ilheos. Soon afterwards, however, he made peace with the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the case of the ague, a reasonable assumption would be that the plague existed in seventeenth-century Virginia. The Great Plague of London (1665) carried away 69,000 persons, and other cities of Europe had even more disastrous epidemics. During the two years before the first settlers arrived at Jamestown, over 2000 victims were buried in London. The accounts of the ocean voyage indicate rat-infested ships. Ships of the London Company ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... Gratian, to his assistance; but before the emperor of the west arrived, he imprudently engaged the Goths near Adrianople, and with the greater part of his army fell on the field. 19. This was the most disastrous defeat which the Romans had sustained for several centuries; and there was reason to dread that it would encourage a revolt of the Gothic slaves in the eastern provinces, which must terminate in the ruin of the empire. To prevent such a catastrophe, the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... luxuriant arboreal vegetation, and that in the interests of self-protection, the promotion of forestal industry is among the first duties of her people. There are in Western Piedmont valleys where the felling of the woods has produced consequences geographically and economically as disastrous as in South-eastern France, and there are many other districts in the Alps and the Apennines where human improvidence has been almost equally destructive. Some of these regions must be abandoned to absolute desolation, and for others the opportunity ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... was one of the four fugitives who, with the general, carried out of the woods the inanimate body of the general's wife into the farmhouse where she died, exhausted by the hardships of that terrible retreat. He had survived that disastrous time to attend his general in Palermo when the Neapolitan shells from the castle crashed upon the town. He had cooked for him on the field of Volturno after fighting all day. And everywhere he had seen ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... appear a variety of formulas which specify pyrites (a combination of sulphur and metal), metals, stones and other minerals, soot, (blue) vitriol, calxes (lime or chalk), dye-woods, berries, plants, and animal colors, some of which if made into ink could only have been used with disastrous ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... Assembly in 1848. He was advocating, against the interests of his own party (which in the Assembly was all- powerful), that the President of the Republic should be chosen by the nation, and not by the Assembly; and he ended by saying that if the course he advocated was disastrous to himself, 'Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.' (8) 'Plausuque sui gaudere theatri.' Quoted by Mr. Pitt, in his speech on the address in 1783, on the occasion of peace being made with France, Spain, and America; in allusion to Mr. Sheridan. ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... when the Sun new-risen Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the Moon In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... army from the Conquerors might Speed their disastrous flight, With thee fierce Genius! let me trace their way, And hear at times the deep heart-groan Of some poor sufferer left to die alone, His sore wounds smarting with the winds of night; And we will pause, where, on the wild, The [1] Mother to her frozen breast, On the heap'd snows reclining ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... authority. The Quebec Act brought a final rupture a step nearer and at last there was open war. "The colonists have brought things to a crisis now, indeed;" wrote Gilchrist; "the consequences must be dreadful to them soon and I am afraid in the end to our country." To Great Britain indeed disastrous they were to be and soon the seigneur of Murray Bay was busy with his share in preparing ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... families who had nothing to gain by leaving Quebec were those who deserved the governor's sympathy, and it was for their safety that Champlain would not agree to offer resistance, as the result must have proved disastrous to them. By the articles of capitulation these families would be able to live quietly at home, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... Where the work of building the home has been entrusted to an architect's hands the latter usually appreciates the fact that the building of the fireplaces is liable more than any other part of the house to be taken into the mason's own hands with, if he is not watched, disastrous results. Undoubtedly every mason would resent most strongly any insinuation as to his lack of knowledge regarding fireplace construction. Each mason not only thinks that he knows how a fireplace should be built, but it is almost as general a rule that he feels that his ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor
... British returned the visit with five sea planes, accompanied by a cruiser and destroyers, with disastrous results. As related in a former chapter at some length, only two of the machines succeeded in escaping from the withering fire of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... smoked and drank Scotch "smoke." The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the flood-gates of a stream of ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... hesitation to be made the common property of all men, no matter in what direction the results of its promulgation may appear to tend. And so far as the ruination of individual happiness is concerned, no one can have a more lively perception than myself of the possibly disastrous tendency of my work. So far as I am individually concerned, the result of this analysis has been to show that, whether I regard the problem of Theism on the lower plane of strictly relative probability, or on the higher plane of purely formal considerations, it equally becomes ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... of taking care of their own losses, but the sympathetic effect of such a failure as this (twenty million dollars), to say nothing of its reaction upon the honor of themselves and the city as a financial center, was a most unsatisfactory if not disastrous thing to contemplate, and now this matter of Cowperwood's having gained handsomely by it all was added to their misery. Both Hand and Arneel growled in opposition when they heard, and Merrill meditated, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... 'it was a most disastrous consequence of carelessness. I had a friend, a good fellow, but not a bit of a sportsman, as sometimes occurs. Well, one day he said to me, "My dear friend, take me out shooting; I am curious to learn what this diversion consists in." I did ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... of the time of first touching the earth depends the success of safely alighting. He may bank too high, and come down on the tail with disastrous results. If there is plenty of field room it is better to come down at a less angle, or even keep the machine at an even keel, and the elevator can then depress the tail while running over the ground, and thus bring the ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... in History, even the most recent, for their distrust of the liberal professions and seemings of Royalty. But were the King and all his House to abdicate and leave the country to-morrow, I believe that would be a disastrous step for Sardinia and for Human Liberty. For this kingdom is almost walled in by enemies—Austria, Tuscany, Rome (alas!) and Naples—all intensely hating it and seeking its downfall because of the Light and Hope which its policy and its example are diffusing among the nations. With the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Massachusetts, the great Webster upheld the rights of property in government, saying: "It is entirely just that property should have its due weight and consideration in political arrangements.... The disastrous revolutions which the world has witnessed, those political thunderstorms and earthquakes which have shaken the pillars of society to their deepest foundations, have been revolutions against property." In Pennsylvania, a leader in local affairs cried out against a plan to remove ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... understand that plasmon was one of the investments which he had made from "the substance of things hoped for," and in the destiny of a disastrous disappointment. But after paying off the creditors of his late publishing firm he had to do something with his money, and it was not his fault if he did not make a fortune out ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... almost helpless with surprise and grief; but she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep again; then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon the disastrous result of her experiment. She tried to believe that her Tom's madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do it. "No," she said, "his HANDS are not mad; they could not unlearn so old a habit in so brief a time. Oh, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... entrance-hall filled by a crowd which did not extend beyond any of the doors leading to the rooms; centring its anxious going and coming around the porter's table, where all the famous names of fashionable Paris were being inscribed. It seemed as though a disastrous gust of wind had gone through the house, carrying off a little of its calm, and allowing disquiet and danger ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... same artist, was found in the old-clothes market at Florence by an artist, bought for a few pence, cleaned and sold to Prince Galitzin for twenty-two thousand francs. The "Fortune" of Michel Angelo, or what was supposed to be, not long since was discovered in the same locality in a disastrous condition, secured for a few shillings, put in such order as was possible, and parted with to a French gentleman for three hundred dollars and a pension of one dollar a day during the lives of the seller and his son. Quite recently one of Correggio's most beautiful works was discovered under ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... advisable by all interested, that Mr. Spencer should not go to his home at all. His business, which was large and important, required his presence every day, and to take two weeks away from it just at that time would be disastrous ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... hero of Fort Stanwix.' This fort was situated on the present site of Rome, N.Y.; and there Gansevoort, with a small body of men, held in check reinforcements on their way to join Burgoyne, until the disastrous ending of the latter's campaign of 1777 was insured. The Gansevoorts, it should be said, were at that time and subsequently ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... architecture, but also contrasts strongly with the classical architecture of Japan itself. Our ancient noble edifices, whether secular or ecclesiastical, were not to be despised even as regards their mere size. The few that have been spared in the disastrous conflagrations of centuries are still capable of aweing us by the grandeur and richness of their decoration. Huge pillars of wood from two to three feet in diameter and from thirty to forty feet high, supported, by a complicated network of brackets, the enormous beams which groaned ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... parties, as traitors, to the scaffold. Democratic cries were resounding, more and more loudly, through the streets. Power was fast passing into the hands of the mob. Should the Duke of Orleans fail his party, there was no one else around whom they could rally, and their disastrous defeat ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... despatched to Italy as lieutenant-general, and besieged Milan, but was repeatedly repulsed, and finally fell back on the Ticino. He was killed at Pavia (February 24, 1525), and was largely responsible for that disastrous defeat, having urged Francis I. to give battle, contrary to the advice of the more experienced captains. Bonnivet, as mentioned by Queen Margaret in this story, had the reputation of being one of the handsomest ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Hercules was known till he consulted the oracle of Delphi. 9. LA DURANCE, a river in southwestern France, flowing into the Rhone below Avignon. After beginning an agressive campaign in this part of France in the summer of 1536, the Spaniards were in September forced to a disastrous retreat. 13. DE MOI, for my own part; Malherbe had lost his first two children, Henry in 1587 and Jourdaine in 1599. 27. LOUVRE; the palace of the Louvre, begun ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... on the wings of meditation borne, Let fond remembrance turn, and turn to mourn; Slowly, and sad, her pinions sweep O'er the rough bosom of the boist'rous deep To that disastrous, fatal coast Where, on the foaming billows tost, Imperial Catherine's navies rode; And war's inviting banners wide Wav'd hostile o'er the glitt'ring tide, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... herself, poor thing. Once she was quite distinguished as a local magazine writer, but...well, you know...all people do not have the good fortune to have their genius universally recognized, and the results are sometimes disastrous. We are so proud to welcome you to-night, Miss Dwight, and—and—your charming friends. I am Jane Upton Halsey." She appeared to think ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... fallen at a more disastrous moment. It came when Wall Street was in a condition of suppressed 'scare'-suppressed, because for a week past the great interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... and scratches, neither Kenric nor Allan had received much hurt. But this accident, which might have proved so disastrous to the isle of Bute, bound the Earl Kenric and Allan Redmain together in a close fellowship, which lasted until they were both ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... lurid glare of which would be seen burning brightly, and raging furiously across the wide Atlantic. The proceedings in America were but as yet, in truth, the warnings of a terrible commotion—the first intimations of an irruption, more frightful in its nature, and more disastrous in its consequences, than the bursting forth of the fire-streaming bowels of Mounts AEtna and Vesuvius, or the devastations of an earthquake. For the storms of human passion, when they burst forth ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... me a patent was, at that period, very disastrous. It was especially discouraging to have made a long voyage across the Atlantic in vain, incurring great expenditure and loss of time, which in their consequences also produced years of delay in the prosecution of my enterprise ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... drooped about the ankles,—trousers of every sort, from blue broadcloth, gold-striped, to the homely fustian,—and a rare show they made. They went fours right or fours left with a fine military jangle, and sometimes went fours right and fours left at the same time, with results disastrous to military order. Then it was good to see and hear the fat Dorn as he caracoled in a field-marshal's uniform, and barked his orders at the disordered crowd like a field-marshal ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... nothing to complain of, for he got as good as he gave, and it occurred to him that he could not expect to start a disastrous conflagration in any maiden bosom so long as he had no brimstone, nor any substitute for it, ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... organ "lower wages are certainly a feature of the new prosperity"—that the American workman need not hope for permanent employment until willing to accept the same wages paid "the pauper labor of Europe," from whose disastrous competition the Republicans solemnly promised him protection. If Supt. Trice is reducing wages and overworking his men it may be accepted as certain that he is compelled thereto by a higher power—that the edict has gone forth that the employees of the I. & G. N. must ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... right. The manner in which the leaders of the Paris Commune dealt with the rights of property during their disastrous, but fortunately very brief, period of office in 1871, serves as a warning of what, in an extreme case, may be expected of despotic democracy in its most aggravated form. Moreover, misgovernment, and the fiscal oppression which is the almost ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... to its sudden and disastrous stop, Smith-Oldwick turned quickly to see what the effect of the accident had been on the girl. He found her pale but smiling, and for several seconds the two sat looking ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... until the strategic objective is achieved. On-the-ground presence, in addition to forces in theater, as demonstrated in Kuwait in 1993 and again in 1996, provided commitment and staying power to convince Iraq that it would be disastrous to consider any form of military action. The inherent staying power of land forces, wherever future tactical concepts may lead, makes them a powerful contributing partner in our Rapid ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... did not play as well in 1912 as it did in the preceding year. There was some bad luck for St. Louis as well as Philadelphia. The players did not get started as well as they had in the previous two years. Their spring training was more or less disastrous, for they were one of the clubs to run into the ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... often and so deeply engaged her secret thoughts; and the idea of her father, associated as it now was with pain, mortification, and misery, never rose to her imagination but instantly to be shunned as some unhallowed image, of which the bitter contemplation was fraught with not less disastrous consequences than the denounced ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... matter of fact, Parker had hoisted the signal only to give Nelson the opportunity for withdrawing from the fight if he wished. The signal had one disastrous result—the little cluster of frigates and sloops engaged with the Three-Crown Batteries obeyed it and hauled off. As the Amazon, Riou's ship, ceased to fire, the smoke lifted, and the Danish battery got her in full sight, and smote her with deadly ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... of this multifarious literature through which his duties led him was the awakening of the ambition to write, stunned by his first disastrous adventures in Boston, and dormant almost ever since, except as it had stirred under the promptings of Evans's kindly interest. But now it did not take the form of verse; he began to write moralistic essays, never ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... polished chip before we have done with him. Your aim, my dear nephew, must always be to be in bon ton. It is not a case of wealth, you understand. Mere riches cannot do it. Golden Price has forty thousand a year, but his clothes are disastrous. I assure you that I saw him come down St. James's Street the other day, and I was so shocked at his appearance that I had to step into Vernet's for a glass of orange brandy. No, it is a question of natural taste, and of following the ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pressed by pain and pressed by pain renewed, Till, closing the life-long vicissitude, Came starving death with full-heaped summer, and Wrung the last pangs that spirit could withstand ... Or to see age in its prison slowly freeze With impotence more disastrous than disease, While trees flowered on, or all the winter through Upheld brave arms and with spring flowered anew Above those living graves and graves of the dead;— 'Twas all such bitterness, but she nothing said. She saw men as courageous boats that ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... resume his attendance upon the king. After him came the duc d'Aiguillon, whose features bore the visible marks of care and disquiet. He met me with the utmost tenderness and concern, asked of me the very smallest details of the disastrous events of the morning. I concealed nothing from him, and he listened to my recital with the most lively interest; and the account of the apparition of the wonderful being who seemed destined to follow me throughout my career was not the least interesting ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... of modern harmony into ecclesiastical music, with reference of course to hymns only. It cannot escape the attention of any one that the modern church music has for one chief differentiation the profuse employment of pathetic chords, the effect of which is often disastrous ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... contempt which a genuine old family ghost has for mere parvenus and impostors is not to be expressed in mere words apparently, for Mauth-hounds of prodigious size and blackness, with white birds, and other disastrous omens, now began to display themselves profusely in the Haunted Chamber. Accustomed as I had become to regard all these appearances as mere automatic symptoms, I confess that I heard with pleasure the crow ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... anything disastrous happened for two or three days after the flood. Life assumed an even tenor, and I yawned ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... the disastrous results of such a course—for the black crimes thrust by Germany upon herself by drawing the sword, and the outrages in which she has indulged herself while drunk with victory are the inevitable fruits of the darkness which she has voluntarily entered. At present she ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... the command of Ricciardetto, Rinaldo's brother, was soon joined by Charlemagne and all his peerage, but experienced a disastrous rout, and the Emperor and many of his paladins were taken prisoners. Gradasso, however, did not abuse his victory; he took Charles by the hand, seated him by his side, and told him he warred only for honor. He renounced all conquests, on condition ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and tea, and especially the dried fruits, made disastrous inroads upon it. The first words they had were over the sugar question. And it is a really serious thing when two men, wholly dependent upon each other for ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... The result was disastrous. England was not able by herself to consume the entire crop. Nor could the merchants re-export it to the continent because they did not have access to the markets. So the tobacco piled up in the English ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... eager to befriend him now. He had expressed no wish to have him sent on the hurried move, but well he knew the post commander's reasons and approved his course. Still, now that Field was being removed, for the time at least, from the possibility of an entangling alliance that might prove disastrous, in every way in his power Ray meant to show the mortified, indeed sorely angered, officer that his personal regard for him had suffered no change whatever. If he could succeed in winning Field's confidence it might ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... his daughter he had spoken only a few cold words, and his last bidding to her was 'Take care of the pothouse!' This treatment gave Miss Fouracres much pain, for she was a softhearted woman, and had never been anything but loyal and affectionate to her father all through his disastrous years. Moreover, she liked the Pig and Whistle, and could not bear to hear it spoken of disdainfully. Before the sound of the cart had died away she had to wipe moisture from her eyes, and at the moment when she was doing so Mr. Ruddiman came ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... believe that I shall speak for many other Europeans in this matter, that what we feared most in the United States was levity. We expected mere excitement, violent fluctuations of opinion, a confused irresponsibility, and possibly mischievous and disastrous interventions. It is no good hiding an open secret. We judged America by the peace headline. It is time we began to offer our apologies to America and democracy. The result of reading endless various American newspapers and articles, of following the actions of the American Government, of talking ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was disastrous to the Warrascoyack settlement. More than 50 men and women were slain "at Mr. Edward Bennett's Plantation" including the commander "Master Th: Brewood, his wife, his childe, two servants." Perhaps, ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... not employ it in the present catalogue of Philippine earthquakes, but retain the almost universally adopted scale of De Rossi-Forel. We shall also present more details as to the towns and buildings damaged, the number of victims and other disastrous effects than enter into the ...
— Catalogue of Violent and Destructive Earthquakes in the Philippines - With an Appendix: Earthquakes in the Marianas Islands 1599-1909 • Miguel Saderra Maso
... universal might sooner or later bring disastrous consequences on the Holy See, but they lay in the uncertain future. It was otherwise with nepotism, which threatened at one time to destroy the Papacy altogether. Of all the 'nipoti,' Cardinal Pietro Riario enjoyed at first the chief and almost exclusive favour ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269, passim.—Minutes of the meeting of the Municipality of Montlhery, February 28, 1792: "We cannot enter into fuller details without exposing ourselves to extremities which would be only disastrous to us."—Letter of the justice of the peace of the canton, February 25: "Public outcry teaches me that if I issue writs of arrest against those who massacred ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... reported to Rilla; but they did not hurt her as they would once have done. They didn't matter, that was all. Life was too big to leave room for pettiness. She had a pact to keep and a work to do; and through the long hard days and weeks of that disastrous autumn she was faithful to her task. The war news was consistently bad, for Germany marched from victory to victory over poor Rumania. "Foreigners—foreigners," Susan muttered dubiously. "Russians or Rumanians or whatever ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the system on which the young girls in this country are brought up. (You see, I have to come back to the young girls.) When it succeeds, they are the most charming possible; when it doesn't, the failure is disastrous. If a girl is a very nice girl, the American method brings her to great completeness—makes all her graces flower; but if she isn't nice, it makes her exceedingly disagreeable—elaborately and fatally perverts her. In ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... fear the enthusiasm they never felt; and instead of cherishing this divine thing, instead of giving it room and air for healthful growth, they would crush and confine it—with but one result of their victorious endeavours— imposthume, fever, and corruption. And the disastrous consequences would soon appear in the intellect likewise which they worship. Kill that whence spring the crude fancies and wild day-dreams of the young, and you will never lead them beyond dull facts—dull because their ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... to his feet, bursting with anger, in spite of the inward admonition that much that he prized was in danger, that any breach with Hylda would be disastrous. But self-will and his native arrogance overruled the monitor within, and he said: "Don't preach to me, don't play the martyr. You will do this and you will do that! You will save my honour and the family name! You will relieve Claridge Pasha, you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... . There is something poetical, and almost heroic, in this Expedition to the Niger—the motives lofty and Christian—the issue so disastrous. Do you remember in A. Cunningham's Scottish Songs {100b} one called 'The Darien Song'? ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... machines of wood and iron, with foot-rests, seats, and desks revolving automatically, in order to preclude alike the movements of the child and the distortions arising from immobility, are the economically disastrous contribution of a false principle of "school-hygiene." In the modern school, the uniform whiteness and the washable quality of every object denote the triumph of an epoch in which the campaign against microbes would seem to be the sole key ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... afterwards ascertained by prisoners who were recaptured from the Wyandotte, that seventeen of the Indians had been killed, and two severely wounded. This battle was fought on the same day, with the disastrous battle of the ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... and continual attacks; never did I endure infidelity so open or insult so unblushing. But, patience; the day of vengeance is at hand, or rather is here! This moment will I fly and take it! Expect to hear 'of battles, sieges, disastrous chances, and of moving accidents; but not of hair breadth 'scapes!'—Escape she cannot! ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... three days, we remained in this state of cruel uncertainty. By the help of my spying-glass, I had made a drawing of this disastrous scene; that I might be enabled the better to ascertain, whether the morrow would be productive ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... got the band buttoned and Sherm heaved a sigh of relief—a disastrous sigh—it sent the button flying and the weighted skirt once more ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... interest which he could get at home, and not considering that the greater the promised profit the greater the risk, he made investments in some of our stock companies and bonds. When these investments proved disastrous, he raved and fumed, calling upon our Government—which had nothing more to do with the matter than had the English Parliament—to make good ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... boast that a horseman might ride without stumbling over the sites where those cities had stood. Panic-stricken, the emperor moved his court from Chung-tu to K'ai-feng Fu, much against the advice of his ministers, who foresaw the disastrous effect this retreat would have on the fortunes of Kin. The state of Sung, which up to this time had paid tribute, now declined to recognize Kin as its feudal chief, and a short time afterwards declared war against its quondam ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Doctor, very well executed, and representing him with a face of fussy activity and benevolence: just the kind of man, if luck favored him, to build up the fortunes of those about him, or, quite as probably, to blight his whole neighborhood by some disastrous speculation. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of gift. Whether it be that "second sight" which we Scotch people are so prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know not, but nothing of a disastrous tendency ever occurs in this place but the men with whom he lives are able to quote after the event some saying of his which certainly appears to have foretold it. He gets uneasy or excited—wakes up, in fact—when death is in ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... and communications. Since 1970, an increasing fraction of the human race has been losing the battle for self-sufficiency in food, and must rely on heavy imports. A major disruption of agriculture and transportation in the grain-exporting and manufacturing countries could thus prove disastrous to countries importing food, farm machinery, and fertilizers—especially those which are already struggling with the threat of widespread starvation. Moreover, virtually every economic area, from food and medicines to fuel and growth engendering ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... anchorages, near Cape Leveque (volume 2 page 91) the brig was for a whole night surrounded by these enormous fish, and the crew in momentary dread of their falling on board, the consequence of which would have been very disastrous. The noise of their fall in the water, on a calm night, was as loud as the report of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... on which the delicate tracery of leafless sprays and blacker chevaux de frise of pine was faintly etched, as a consistent setting to the turrets and peacefully stacked chimneys of Stukeley Castle. Yet, even in this disastrous eclipse of color and distance, the harmonious outlines of the long, gray, irregular pile seemed to him as wonderful as ever. It still dominated the whole landscape, and, as he had often fancied, carried this subjection even to the human beings who had created ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... fire-place, and in a half dreamy state was reviewing the incidents of my early life, and like most men who, however young, have still to lament talents misapplied, opportunities neglected, profitless labour, and disastrous idleness. The dreary aspect of the large and ill-lighted room—the close-curtained boxes—the unsocial look of every thing and body about suited the habit of my soul, and I was on the verge of becoming excessively sentimental—the unbroken ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... one of the poorest and least developed Latin American countries, reformed its economy after suffering a disastrous economic crisis in the early 1980s. The reforms spurred real GDP growth, which averaged 4 percent in the 1990s, and poverty rates fell. Economic growth, however, lagged again beginning in 1999 because of a global slowdown ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... absolute military despotism. "A military republic, a government founded on mock elections and supported only by the sword," was nearly a quarter of a century since pronounced by Daniel Webster, when speaking of the South American States, as "a movement, indeed, but a retrograde and disastrous movement, from the regular and old-fashioned monarchical ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... professedly defensive warlike preparations have in effect been preparations for breaking the peace; against which, at least ostensibly, a remedy had been sought in the preparation of still heavier armaments, with full realisation that more armament would unfailingly entail a more unsparing and more disastrous war,—which sums up the statecraft of the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Mr. Davis's prediction of the destruction of the army would have been realized, or else Sherman would have been obliged to make a successful retreat, which Mr. Davis said in his speeches would prove more disastrous than Napoleon's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... be few things so bad as the sense of insecurity that we had that afternoon. The very ground seemed to have been cut away from under our feet. We had gathered enough from the officers of our Division to know that something very disastrous "somewhere" had occurred. It was the very vagueness of the thing that terrified us. What could have happened? Only something very monstrous could have compelled so general a retirement. We might all of us be prisoners ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... so be it; one can get out of it, thank God! or at least, one can hope so, which shortens the time infinitely. Beside, the colonel might noise abroad my approaching descent into Cornwall, which would be truly disastrous." ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... eighteen-mile ride to Valley Forge over the crooked Perkiomen road, which, was none the better for the breaking up of the frost. I rode along with a light heart, but I was watchful, being so used to disastrous adventures. Happily, I met with ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Town did Old King Cole A wise old age anticipate, Desiring, with his pipe and bowl, No Khan's extravagant estate. No crown annoyed his honest head, No fiddlers three were called or needed; For two disastrous heirs instead Made music more than ever ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the name of James the Eighth, and the landowners in the counties subject to the Earl were taxed at whatever rate he chose to impose. Perth continued to be the head-quarters of the Lieutenant General until a few days before this disastrous ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson |
